| ioi said: Awesome work NJ5 and spot on. We should do a quarterly analysis like this at each interval so people can see exactly how many units are where. Interesting that retailer units have decreased a little (they order less to sell what they have) and you are right about there being no way Sony can hit their targets which does raise legal and moral issues of exactly what can you report as a forecast? You could say 20 million, ship 5 million and just say you missed the forecast - by then most people have read the 20 million forecast and made business decisions on it. Again, nice thread and hopefully the definitive and last one we will have on the subject. |
ioi, I think from a legal standpoint what they are doing [or what they could do] is not considered illegal. I don't know much about legal matters, but as long as there is information out there that people can use to base their investments on, then Sony can't be held liable. If we at this website can put all of this together, then so can the investors if they care to.
Ethically it's just a business move really. It's skeezy, but permissable. The reason why I wouldn't consider it totally unethical is because eventually Sony will have to take a hit from overestimating. The bubble will eventually burst because there is no way to avoid it. I think the more discrepency there is in forecasting to units sold, the more obvious it will be and more investors will get out early.
In the end I think it will all work out to the way it should. If you make a product that doesn't fit the market like you say it will, you take the hits while they come and give accurate estimates, or you hold off information as long as possible with the result being a huge crash that shakes both the financial and moral trust the public has in the company. I think Sony is overestimating by a lot and they will get what's coming to them because there are checks and balances, those being us the consumers and shareholders who are knowledgable. It won't be a huge crash, but in the end Sony is really only hurting themselves.
